Calling Your Energy Back
As a practice, I’ve recently been taking time to call my energy back into my body.
I learned this skill from a holistic vocal coach, sound healer, and friend. A simple, mindful voice-and-breath practice that helps me gather my scattered attention and settle it back into my body. A way to reconnect with myself before the spiral takes over.
Most days, my attention is everywhere - into my work, my kids’ schedules, the endless to-do lists, and yes, into the rabbit holes of social media. A notification about another school shooting or a story of something awful happening in our country, and suddenly I’m spiraling. My energy is everywhere and honestly, it makes me feel dysregulated.
So at the end of the day, I try to recall all those scattered pieces of myself - the emotional conversation at the office, the email with the teacher about one of my kids, the time I spent reading comments online - and I imagine pulling them back in. I own my energy and the act of calling these moments back into my physical body can help calm down the external pull. Sometimes I feel relief. Sometimes I feel grief. I allow these feelings to come out.
It’s not magic.
It’s me remembering that I’m a whole person, not just a mom reacting to fear after fear.
It strikes me that what feels normal now - always being on alert - wasn’t the way so many of us grew up.
When I was a kid, nobody was tracking me on a phone or telling me about every scary thing that could happen. When I was in 7th grade, I biked all the way from my house to Parkside, to McDonald’s on Prospect, and then over to Ella Sharp Park to swim and jump off that amazing high diving board. (Who remembers that adrenaline kick?) Sometimes with friends, sometimes without. I’m sure my mom worried, but she also trusted me. That trust shaped me. It gave me confidence.
Now, parenting my own kids, the temptation is to hover - to track every move, to over-protect. But when I call my energy back, I remember: my kids don’t need me wound tight with fear. They need me present. They need me to show them what it looks like to trust your instincts, to check in with yourself, to feel when something’s wrong and to walk away. Also, to teach them how to safely bike across town so they can get their own McDonalds and spend their own money.
That’s the kind of awareness I actually want them to carry into the world - not fear, but presence.
And that’s part of what The Village Collective is about: reminding each other that it’s possible to come back to ourselves, even when the world around us is loud and unpredictable.
